Oliver Postgate RIP

[nefertiti]

Listen to me and I will tell you the story of Oliver, as it was told in the days of old

Creator of The Clangers, Bagpuss, Noggin the Nog and Ivor the Engine,

Socialist committed opponenet of the War in Iraq and the man who (in collaboration with Peter Firmin) maybe more than any other to engage with the imagination of British childhood

The Clangers are silent. The Soupdragon's soup is cold. Ivor's engine has gone out. Emily's shop is closed.

Professor Yaffle is just an old wooden bookend in the shape of a woodpecker.

And Oliver is gone- but never forgotten

[Nishlord]

Oliver Postgate RIP

I hope he instructed all the pallbearers to go "HEEEAVE! HEEEAVE! HEEEAVE! HEEEAVE!" as they go up the aisle of the church.

[ian.64]

Oliver Postgate RIP

RIP indeed.

Today, you've got CGI-rich kids' programmes, done without craft, love or a knowing sense of innocence. Each offering either has the look of a video game or has tie-ins with them, or they're shallow, churn-'em-out computer-graphic offerings featuring characters that look as if they've been designed in someone's lunch break and are told with the same lack of affection.

You do get the odd gem that slips through the net, with a better understanding of their audience - In The Night Garden, Pocoyo - but on the whole, it's cookie-cutter stuff intended to keep the kids quiet for a bit.

I know it's facile to immediately refer to today's stuff and compare it with little mercy to the Postgate gems of old, but, along with the Trumpton and Camberwick Green treasures, Oliver Postgate introduced an exacting and artful approach to children's television, where his imagination and skill - and, above all, feeling - produced some quite exquisite stuff. You can feel the work and care put into programmes like Bagpuss which may never be truly revisited again as long as someone in a production studio has a few drawings, a few spare hours and a PC.

Sleep well, Mr. P.

[Gangster Octopus]

Oliver Postgate RIP

As I will remember him.

[evilC]

Oliver Postgate RIP

Very sad.

He sculpted the childhood memories of a whole generation of British kids.

I've recounted this before but...

When I was a tiny kid, I had an irrational dislike of Madeira cake (without having even tried it, of course!). So my Mum told me it was the 'bean cake' that the Pogles used to eat, in 'Pogle's Wood'. With that, I would eat slice after slice of the stuff ...and guess what? It was beautiful!

His work always seemed to carry that sense of simplicity that made it feel very honest. That in itself was a thing of beauty.

RIP, Oliver ...you genius.

"And when Bagpuss yawned..."

[evilC]

Oliver Postgate RIP

Links to The Dragon's Friendly Society here and here.

[E10 Rifle]

Oliver Postgate RIP

Postgate was also the great great grandson of Tolpuddle martyr James Brine.

[wingco]

Oliver Postgate RIP

One of the last things I saw him do was present the documentary on the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. He rose to the occasion with great avant garde mischief. In all the interviews, his image can be seen projected in odd places in the background, like some bearded, elderly sprite.

High up on my agenda upon Alisha's revival was to make sure we got into The Clangers. I was able to buy the DVD for £3.99 and then, when she ruined it with an upturned bowl of Cocopops, £3.99 again. As hauntological as kids' telly gets. The beginnings to each show were like parodies of Powell/Pressburger's A Matter Of Life And Death, musing on the vastness of the cosmos.

[evilC]

Oliver Postgate RIP

wingco wrote:

One of the last things I saw him do was present the documentary on the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. He rose to the occasion with great avant garde mischief. In all the interviews, his image can be seen projected in odd places in the background, like some bearded, elderly sprite.

Y'see, I just found that effect annoyingly distracting, when I just wanted to concentrate on the words of the commentators.

High up on my agenda upon Alisha's revival was to make sure we got into The Clangers. I was able to buy the DVD for £3.99 and then, when she ruined it with an upturned bowl of Cocopops, £3.99 again. As hauntological as kids' telly gets. The beginnings to each show were like parodies of Powell/Pressburger's A Matter Of Life And Death, musing on the vastness of the cosmos.

Yes! It was fantastic, wasn't it? I think that my favourite bit in the whole series was when they (The Clangers) freaked out the spaceman. It also tackled quite heavy subjects, in places, like depression and being unable to have children. It was incredibly moving in those episodes too.

Part of what made Postgate's stories so good was the way in which he/they would include a large cast of characters - something you don't get with alot of those 'Transformers-style' animations and a trick that Matt Groening used to great effect in The Simpsons. It creates a 'universe', as they say.

[wingco]

Oliver Postgate RIP

Actually, must confess I found it a bit distracting to, Clive but I admired the spirit.

[pishtico pishtico]

Oliver Postgate RIP

my boys were brought up with the "Pishtico Pishtico's " as Ivor made his way up to the top of the hill.
sad day indeed

[Mumpo]

Oliver Postgate RIP

I've been trying to write him an eulogy over lunch, but frankly it is beyond my wit and craft to do the man justice. So I'll just have to resort to cliche and say that he was a genius and a legend, and that my childhood memories are vastly sweeter for his timeless creations.

[Alderman Barnes]

Oliver Postgate RIP

What Mumpo said. I haven't got many heroes but Oliver Postgate was one of them.

[wingco]

Oliver Postgate RIP

Bet you it isn't, Mumpo.

[Ray de Galles]

Oliver Postgate RIP

pishtico pishtico wrote:

my boys were brought up with the "Pishtico Pishtico's " as Ivor made his way up to the top of the hill.
sad day indeed

I've had cause to pull you up on this before, as a Welshman I must tell you it's "Pssssht-y-cooph".

[evilC]

Oliver Postgate RIP

Harri Saer wrote:

pishtico pishtico wrote:

my boys were brought up with the "Pishtico Pishtico's " as Ivor made his way up to the top of the hill.
sad day indeed

I've had cause to pull you up on this before, as a Welshman I must tell you it's "Pssssht-y-cooph".

I'm not Welsh, but I too thought that the pronunciation was self-evident (as the latter).

[Guy Profumo]

Oliver Postgate RIP

Mumpo wrote:

I've been trying to write him an eulogy over lunch, but frankly it is beyond my wit and craft to do the man justice. So I'll just have to resort to cliche and say that he was a genius and a legend, and that my childhood memories are vastly sweeter for his timeless creations.

Then you could do worse than these people, and simply use his own words...

http://www.nogginthenog.co.uk/

Great was the sadness and loud the wailing. The flags on the houses were pulled to half mast and the great bell rang.

[Gangster Octopus]

Oliver Postgate RIP

I knew that I was upset about this, but not just how upset until I went out for a meal with my wife this evening. We'd had a pleasant time and, just as a conversation piece, I mentioned that Oliver Postgate had died.

She didn't remember at first who I was talking about, but mentioning The Clangers and Noggin, she did. At this point I disintegrated into tears. And still am, unless I concentrate not to be.

I'm still not sure why exactly. Or maybe I am. It's just that Postgate's voice reading (if that's how he did it) or, more importantly, introducing Noggin The Nog takes me back to a certain place in my childhood where I was happy and safe. Something I associate with my Grandad and Grandma, who I lived with for a while. People and places who were desperately precious to me.

That voice was just so utterly reassuring and safe. As were my grandparents. And I'm never going to hear them again. I'm going to have to stop now.

[Felicity, I guess so]

Oliver Postgate RIP

I know exactly what you mean, GO, both about the qualities of his voice and the ability of popular cultural artefacts to somehow bottle/preserve feelings and emotions that you'd forgotten, or don't regularly think about.

I had a similar experience recently after I'd downloaded some Renaud songs.
He's an emotional fellow in any case, with a way with a good tune that can also tug at the heartstrings, but I found myself filling up cos the experience of listening to him was so full of buried grief about the closing down of the languages dept. and my subsequent exile from French culture/French colleagues/speaking-reading-working in French regularly...

[Andy C]

Oliver Postgate RIP

I've just watched this episode of the Clangers and I'm welling up in just the way that GO describes so eloquently. He was a very special human being indeed.

[wingco]

Oliver Postgate RIP

Thanks for linking to that, Andy. It's one of the ones I've come to know very well through showing it over and over to Alisha (who hasn't got to grips with its full hauntological/Utopian ramifications, such is the superficiality of youth, although she does think that Tiny Clanger is very funny). It looks like the New York skyline the telescope is scanning - one could ask, why the Clangers wouldn't be excited to visit such a place but I suppose the Postgate take on this was that our planet is dangerously over-developed, and I'd hesitate to say he's wrong about that. I'd also hesitate to say he's right about it, mind.

[evilC]

Oliver Postgate RIP

Something that occured to me shortly after hearing the news of his death - and, of course, feeling really upset about it - was that he was "the John Peel of children's television". They both had a variant of the air of the kindly, eccentric but knowledgeable uncle-figure about them and the news of their deaths has had a similar reception among us 'people of a certain age'.

It's a shame they don't share the same birthdate or something spooky - then we could perhaps abandon one of our existing bank holidays and have one in their honour, instead: 'Postgate-Peel Day', where we all have the day off work and you instead have to spend the day indulging in the simple pleasures in life - reading children's books, watching children's television & film, listening to music*, etc, etc. I reckon they would have appreciated that.

(* - Apologies to the music journalists out there, for whom this might be a bit of a busman's holiday!)

[Felicity, I guess so]

Oliver Postgate RIP

Did anyone see Charlie Brooker's excellent and moving tribute at the end of his 'Children's TV' special last night?